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Artist
Maxim Mental
11+ albums
about
Maxim Mental is the sequel to Say Anything and he doesn’t care who knows it. Men in popular rock bands adore the idea of “the solo project.” A project in which they call the shots, the contract is in their name, and they don’t have to fight with four slackers they’ve lived with since college to stand in the front at photo shoots. Unfortunately Say Anything already had in spades. Singer/Songwriter Max Bemis was a “frontman” to an extent that might make Dave Grohl or Conor Oberst feel like the drummer of Spinal Tap. Twenty years of wearing too many hats and the endless misperceptions of his divisive outpourings resulted in a mental health crisis, just as Say Anything secured a comfortable legacy and Bemis had settled into a newly successful career as a Marvel comic writer; Max had actually been “asylum free” since his debut LP earned him a ubiquitous reputation for being emo’s Brian Wilson. Say Anything was, despite its place in a genre known for sincerity, somewhat of a satire of the quintessential emo band. Bemis being the Andy Kaufman of it all was enough to delight and confuse an entire generation as to whether he was a “real boy” or Ziggy Stardust infused with Curb Your Enthusiasm and the Vagrant Records discography. The final Say Anything LP was written from the point of Oliver Appropriate, a personification of this intentionally confused public persona; his death during climactic “Sediment” echoed the end of an era for the band itself. When ready to recover from
